Legal Fee Cut In Suit Over Phone Charges

November 13, 1986|By JOE KOLLIN, Staff Writer

The case of the $3.80 telephone call that led to a $6,629 court judgment took a new twist Wednesday when a judge handed the mobile home park owners who started the legal battle their first victory in the 18-month-old dispute.

Broward County Court Judge Harvey Ford reduced by $1,250 the amount he last month ordered the owners to pay the attorney of tenant Bernard Gottlieb.

The result reversed what had become usual in the case: James F. Pollack, attorney for the owners, always vowed to appeal his losses. This time he said he won`t. And Jerry Hall, who successfully defended Gottlieb from the owners throughout the case, this time was the one promising to appeal.

On Oct. 16, Ford ordered the 32 owners of the Lone Pine Mobile Home Park in Pembroke Park to pay Hall $3,750 -- $125 an hour for 30 hours of work -- for defending Gottlieb from their legal appeal.

Ford, as a condition of the judgment, ordered Hall to provide the hand- written time sheets he used to calculate the number of hours he worked. However, Hall said, his secretary inadvertently discarded them and he couldn`t produce them.

So Pollack asked Ford to reduce the $3,750 judgment. Ford agreed and cut the number of hours he allowed Hall from 30 to 20, which reduces the amount that the owners must pay by $1,250, from $3,750 to $2,500.

``I think that should be a substantial penalty,`` Ford said.

Hall`s appeal will take the case to Broward Circuit Court for the second time.

The case involves Gottlieb, 77, who since 1977 has spent his summers in Orangeburg, N.Y., and his winters in the mobile home park. In June 1985, the park contended it didn`t get his $200 rent check and an employee called collect to New York to tell him. Gottlieb, saying he sent the check and that he was misled into accepting the collect call, deducted the $3.80 charge from the next month`s rent.

The owners refused to accept the rent check because it was $3.80 short, and sued to evict him from the park for non-payment of rent.